New Zealand dairy cooperative Fonterra signs on HCL to manage its tech infrastructure

New Zealand’s dairy cooperative Fonterra has chosen information technology services firm HCL Technologies to modernise and manage its technology infrastructure.

The multi-year partnership aims to consolidate the milk cooperative’s technology suppliers and bring together the information technology (IT) infrastructure services under one umbrella, the companies said in a statement.

Noida-based HCL said that the deal will enhance Fonterra’s employee experience and enable it to navigate through the co-operative's business operations. Fonterra co-operative is owned by about 10,000 farmers and is a large dairy exporter.

“Fonterra employees have said there is room for us to improve the tools and technologies we use on a daily basis at work and this partnership with HCL will allow us to make major improvements for our employees in terms of end-user experience and provide the digital foundation to our transformation initiatives," Piers Shore, Fonterra’s chief information officer, said.

With this deal, HCL’s New Zealand presence will increase to three offices and generate about 60 new jobs in the country’s Waikato region. The local support services for Fonterra employees will be based at HCL's Hamilton delivery centre. According to HCL, this will support New Zealand's IT ecosystem by investing in local skills and partnering with regional companies as well as developing local expertise to fill technology roles in the coming years.

"We have been supporting Fonterra for over a decade by managing its IT application support and maintenance portfolio, including SAP. The expansion of partnership will enable us to further support both Fonterra’s business strategy as well as the agritech sector overall in the region,” Michael Horton, executive vice president and country manager for Australia and New Zealand at HCL Technologies, said.

Fonterra said that the partnership would help the company improve its cyber security framework and strengthen critical IT foundation.

"We are consolidating our external IT suppliers and through this, we expect to make significant savings relative to our existing infrastructure IT spend over the next five years,” Shore added.

Earlier this month, HCL opened a new delivery centre in Sri Lanka and last month, it launched a dedicated business unit for Microsoft technologies.  

The company reported a 16% rise in net profit to Rs 3,037 crore for the third quarter ended December 2019 from Rs 2,611 crore a year ago, while its revenue rose 15.5% to Rs 18,135 crore year-on-year.